How to Haunt Your Home With Faux-Broken Glass

September 28, 2018

In a world of crazy store-bought and DIY Halloween accessories, broken glass windows certainly seem like one of the most subtle accents one could add to their home this time of year… they look super cool in the evening when all of the lights have your house a-glow, and you should totally try it.

Though easy and inexpensive to implement, they’re impacting enough to make me do a double-take if I’m coming home in the evening. At a glance, it looks like the windows have been smashed.

You could add the detail to any window, but I vote for highly visible spots like a pane of glass on your garage door (if backlit), or a pane in the front door, or a transom window, a window facing your neighbors (guaranteed to alarm them) and especially hit the spots that your Trick or Treaters are bound to see (and put a real-creepy-something on the other side of those windows).

You’ll only need two things:

a roll of matte transparent contact paper (~$5)

scissors

Unroll the contact paper, and trim it into various triangles. Don’t get too worked up over the shape and size of them initially, but aim to have a variety of triangles, some of which can be upwards of half or 3/4 the length of the longest edge of the window. if you’re dressing up a BIG window cut pieces that are larger. For smaller panes, go smaller.

When you’re ready to crack some glass, clean the window surface well, and then peel the backing from the contact paper to reveal the matte adhesive. Stick the triangles one at a time to the window. Align one straight edge of each triangle against the frame of the window, and layer as you work your way around. How shattered and affected the glass appears depends on how many triangles you add to each window – the triangles will represent shards that are left in the window frame, and the glass left uncovered by contact paper will render as the part of the window that was broken away.

Easy as could be! Once the holiday is over, the contact paper can be peeled off without any adhesive residue.